Spain’s supreme court Thursday overturned the guilty verdicts on four of the 21 people convicted over the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.

It also upheld a lower court’s decision to acquit one of the alleged masterminds of the Al Qaeda-inspired attacks, Rabei Ousmane Sayed Ahmed, known as “Mohammed the Egyptian”.

And it handed down a four-year prison term to a Spaniard, Antonio Toro, who had been acquitted on charges of transporting explosives.

Note: the attack is no longer considered the direct handiwork of al-Qaeda but is rather an “al-Qaeda inspired attack.” Back in March, 2004, the corporate media resoundingly declared al-Qaeda to be responsible.

The supreme court Thursday overturned the convictions of Basel Ghalyoun and Mohamed Almallah Dabas, both condemned to 12 years in prison for belonging to a terrorist group.

It also cleared Abdelilah El Fadual El Akil, condemned to nine years for collaborating with a terrorist group, as well as Raul Gonzalez Pena, who had received five years for supplying explosives.

In other words, according to Spain’s Supreme Court, these people did not belong to a terrorist group, at least not an Islamic terrorist group. Apparently, there was not enough evidence to stay the conviction of “Mohammed the Egyptian,” said to be the ringleader, and his conviction was thrown out as well.

The court in October had handed down the heaviest sentences to two Moroccans — Jamal Zougam and Othman el-Gnaoui — and a Spaniard, Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras.

As it turns out, Trashorras and a compatriot, Antonio Toro, were government informants, a fact reported by the New York Times and the Times Online. Toro was recently handed a four-year prison for transporting explosives.

The History Commons on the Cooperative Research website notes the following:

It is revealed that the man accused of supplying the dynamite used in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings was an informant who had the private telephone number of the head of Spain’s Civil Guard bomb squad. Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a miner with access to explosives, as well as an associate named Rafa Zouhier both regularly informed for the Spanish police, telling them about drug shipments. Trashorras began working as an informant after being arrested for drug trafficking in July 2001, while Zouhier became an informant after being released from prison early in February 2002. Shortly after the Madrid bombings, investigators discover that Trashorras’ wife Carmen Toro has a piece of paper with the telephone number of Juan Jesus Sanchez Manzano, head of Tedax, the Civil Guard bomb squad. She and her brother Antonio Toro are also informants.

In short, Trashorras and Toro are patsies and the evidence indicates the Spanish Civil Guard bomb squad was behind the bombing and a phantom “al-Qaeda inspired” terrorist group was simply a contrivance designed to feed public hysteria.

A clip from Alex Jones’ Terrorstorm on Operation Gladio.

All of this is reminiscent of murderous Operation Gladio false flag operations carried out by the CIA, NATO, the P2 Masonic lodge, and their fascist allies in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, operations designed to be blamed on communists. “One of P-2′s specialties was the art of provocation. Leftist organizations like the Red Brigades were infiltrated, financed and / or created, and the resulting acts of terrorism, like the assassination of Italy’s premier in 1978 and the bombing of the railway station in Bologna in 1980, were blamed on the left. The goal of this ‘strategy of tension’ was to convince Italian voters that the left was violent and dangerous-by helping make it so,” writes Mark Zepezauer.

It now appears obvious the Madrid bombing was a Gladio-like operation designed to frighten and stampede the Spanish public into supporting the bogus war against terror and, as well, re-elect as prime minister José María Aznar, the grandson of a prominent Franco fascist and a favorite of Bush and the neocons. Aznar, however, was roundly trounced in the elections.